


Airplane

by cristianoronaldo



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-08 23:54:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cristianoronaldo/pseuds/cristianoronaldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Everyone kisses the wrong person at some point,” Stevie had said after the kiss with a little smile like Xabi was in on the secret. But Xabi wasn’t and he didn’t understand. People do kiss the wrong person all the time. Xabi didn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Airplane

**Author's Note:**

> The ship that sails itself.

Xabi thought distance was horrible, but then again he wasn’t supposed to care. He shrugged, smiled, said he would miss Steven-not-Stevie (because he was convinced there was a way to separate love and Stevie and formality begged to be tried) and departed with his suitcase rolling cleanly behind him. Madrid was beautiful, but so was Stevie. Madrid was sunny and Stevie wasn’t at all, but he did have that cloudy sort of sunshine where the light dissolves the darkness anyway. 

“Everyone kisses the wrong person at some point,” Stevie had said after the kiss with a little smile like Xabi was in on the secret. But Xabi wasn’t and he didn’t understand. People do kiss the wrong person all the time. Xabi didn’t. 

He thinks it’s like falling out of the sky with no parachute or wings, just a hole falling through a hole falling through a hole and so on until he can’t wrap his head around it anymore. 

He used to think something connected them— love for a club, love for each other… something, anything. But then he realized the only thing they had in common was the distance between fingers of empty hands and the whir of an airplane engine as it takes off. 

Xabi visits one Christmas after he leaves because he’s adjusting well to Madrid and he doesn’t want to fit in half as much as he wants to feel the comfortable pain of missing Liverpool. Missing things, he decides, is the only way to be there without actually being there. He visits the training grounds and walks by Stevie who gives him an enthusiastic hug, but Xabi thinks he’s just as unreachable as ever. 

There are songs he wants to tell Stevie about and games he wants them to watch together and a thousand other things he wants to use to breach the gap, but Xabi decides the gap is unbreachable. He likes believing that. It’s better than believing there’s a way and he just can’t find it, or can’t make himself find it. 

He leaves for Madrid the day after Christmas that year, stuffs the paper white boarding pass into his pocket as he takes his seat on the plane. He stretches his feet out and stares out the window until he remembers he’s not supposed to care about distance. He straightens up and feels for the boarding pass in his pocket before he remembers again. 

When he gets home and unzips his suitcase in the quiet of the house, he feels for the boarding pass with the familiar word he so closely associated with the kiss, the miracle, Stevie: Liverpool. It burns red in his hands and he realizes Stevie and love are inseparable just as his time at Liverpool was inseparable from the miracle of loving something so completely. 

Xabi knows it’s something he can’t rid himself of and he knows he’s already gone anyway. He doesn’t consider telling anyone because his life has moved on. Xabi believes his life is moving on without him and if he doesn’t race to catch up, he might never be able to. He decides love holds people back and the concept disgusts him. 

Steven texts him before a big Champions League match. Good luck was all it said and he hastily stuffed the phone into his locker, shaking his head to compensate for the shaking in his hands. They win the game, celebrate, Xabi forgets all about the text for the time being. But when he gets home, he pulls out his phone again and stares at it, sets it on the nightstand next to the crumpled up boarding pass from so many months ago. 

He decides that missing people isn’t really the same as being there and letting go a long time ago would have been better. He leaves his phone next to the boarding pass and leaves moving on for another day. He replies to the text the following day with a simple Thank you, were you watching? 

He receives no reply and he tries to tell himself that it’s okay. 

It’s not okay. It doesn’t become okay. Xabi realizes it’s not a fairy tale and things aren’t going to magically fall into place. He left and Madrid is his home now. Steven-not-Stevie (because formality made remembering harder) stayed and Liverpool is his home. 

Xabi thinks he’s letting go little by little, but many months pass before he really reflects on it and, when he does, he finds he holds on to Liverpool and Steven with the same death grip he always did.


End file.
